Kalanidhi Maran

Kalanithi Maran is an Indian media baron who is the chairman and founder of the Sun Group. He owns television channels, newspapers, weeklies, FM Radio stations, DTH services and a movie production house. He also held a major share in the Indian airline Spice Jet from 2010 to 2015.  

He is the son of the Late leader Murasoli Maran and the grandnephew of DMK president M Karunanidhi, and the brother of Dayanidhi Maran, India's ex-Minister for Communications and Information Technology & the current textiles minister. He started his TV channel with an investment of $86000 from bank loans and he proved to be successful inspite of his father's political rivals ruling the state for most of the period since he entered into media business.

He was a 1999 recipient of the International Young Business Achiever award from the Worldcom group, New York. Kalanidhi Maran was also among the few representatives at a round table with visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton. He was India's 20th richest person ranked by Forbes.

Sun TV was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange on April 24, 2006, with 10% of the shares widely held and 90% still owned by Maran.

Prestigious Forbes named him as "Television king of southern India". He is now ranked at 349th in the world.

Early Life

He did his schooling at Don Bosco, Egmore, Chennai, graduated from Loyola College, Chennai. He received an MBA from the University of Scranton. Was an amateur radio operator at callsign VU2PUG. He was working for Kunkumam in the late 1980s. He started his own monthly video news magazine, Poomaalai, in 1990 and founded Sun TV on April 14, 1993.